#vi liveblogs

[waywardmillennial]

THAT'S HOW THEY ENDED THE EPISODE ??!!

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Yet another thing that I recently realized about Umineko (spoilers ahead)

Among the rules of the Rokkenjima “board” there’s one that states that characters can’t do things that are out of character for them. They can act rashly and irrationally but it must be rooted in their own knowledge and characterization.

And yet, there is one character that seems to skirt the line on that rule - a character whose capriciousness, self-indulgence and volatility are so infamous that practically any action they are assumed to have taken by the other pieces can be excused as one of their pranks or whims or fits

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s precisely the character that has never been actually present as a piece in the board when the game starts

[papika]

i love their friendship so much 😭

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Happy pride month

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Finished part 1 of the umineko question arcs! Boy that was something! I’m not 100% sure what’s going on currently with the second part narrative wise but I’m intrigued

Some notes

I love how pretty much pretty much every (human) character who acts like an asshole gets to have some sympathy and it feels less redemptive and more tragic. The scenes with Rosa and Maria are particularly. oof. in that “I get how you’re a single parent who has no clue how to instill a sense of empathy and boundaries on a neurodivergent child and you’ve 100% got some huge baggage and you go through these cycles of anger and guilt but jesus h christ woman” way

The part 1 massacre was pretty scary but good lord did I get SUPER scared there was gonna be a jump scare in the part with Maria facing the wall

I love Kumasawa’s mischevious old lady laugh...it’s one of those things that makes me glad I’ve got the voices on (together with “BEATORISHIIIII”)

I admit I’m not as enthralled by Shannon and Kanon’s respective romantic arcs just cuz it’s not quite my bag but a) oh my god Kanon’s big ass coat b) I really like how Jessica’s conversation about “selves” ties into the way they were talking about chuuninbyou stuff in part 1 and c) I fell for Beatrice’s apparent good will...I’m a fool... (U,n,U)

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Tired: “Furudo Erika is a Vriska”

Wired: “Furudo Erika is a Lesswronger”

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Umineko log: This message bottle is sponsored by Blue Apron

OK this story is now officially spinning too many plates for me to properly keep track of but it’s very fun and engaging. But god there’s so many reality layers!! There’s the game board, there’s a tale of two Beatos, there’s Ange + Hachijou and Ange + Featherine, there’s Meta Battler being a douchebag - and they crisscross in ways I don’t 100% understand

That said, this part is really good. The extremely prescient slam about the fandomization of true crime and the rubbernecking involved, right down to people making actual RPF... Battler more or less repeating Kinzo’s awful mistakes hurts so good... And the mystery of Nice Beato... I love how Ange has sort of become the audience surrogate-slash-greek chorus since Bats had a brain blast, and she asks some helpfully pointed questions about the narrative mechanics and meanings that do feel very in-character

Erika as a character drives me bananas (positive), she’s such an incredible lynchpin of the various themes so far. She’s a girlfailure trying to be a girlboss. She’s a detached asshole who only cares about the story as a puzzle. She’s a person jammed into the claustrophobic mold of an archetype. She’s an abused daughter. She’s the terrified puppet/acolyte of a capricious, sadistic god. She has no love for the detective genre because she considers it basically the SATs for her own existence. She’ll pathetically try to argue with a little girl that magic isn’t real while everyone silently grinds their teeth. She’s the first girl ever to mansplain

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I think it’s very intriguing that thus far Umineko’s take on the fantasy/reality dichotomy seems to be “narrative and fantasy can be great ways of coping with and processing trauma but they can also allow toxic ideas to be internalized more easily by yourself and keep you from fully contextualizing your feelings and even render you docile and/or solipsistic”

It’s great that Maria can enjoy Sakutaro’s company in order to deal with loneliness but like...Sakutaro isn’t really helping her make friends, and his capacity to do so is rather limited because actual friends don’t exist simply for you and real friendship demands some skills that require a degree of trial and error as a human being

Like Maria is coping the best she can with a deeply undesirable living arrangement and she’s not wrong to defend that before Ange but also. this child’s greatest dream is to have a pagan version of the Rapture happen to her and her entire family